#Mulan is so good

[artist-issues]

tune in next week to hear me obnoxiously and redundantly say every obvious but wonderful thing about Mulan

[narcissusneverknewme]

they wouldn't let me write the live action Disney adaptions because I would have had the best Ping you have ever seen. He and Shang would have had chemistry that took your breath away. They would be Yearning. the audience would be Yearning. it would be electric and terrifying and by marika would Mulan/Ping be hot. Shang is obsessed, the audience is obsessed. there would be hardly be a person in the attendance that doesn't Get where Shang is coming from. who wouldn't rend their clothes and scream to the heavens over Mulan/Ping. she takes no prisoners.

and yes, Shang kisses him in the snow as he cradles Ping's injured, dying body.

and yes, from the opening scene to the rolling credits he's going slowly mad.

and the first time you see Mulan she's dressed in the most feminine, floaty, light-colored dressy robes, with bone white makeup and painted lips and you fall in love with her. and there's something underneath, too. and it's so intriguing.

and then she shows up as Ping, and it takes a while to get used to, and it's kind of funny and awkward. but then it looks better and better to you. and soon you find you can hardly bear it when the camera turns away from him for even a second. and Ping isn't awkward to be around at all, he's stunning and brave and resilient and determined to be kind and you're desperately in love with him and you decide he looks incredible in the warriors' robes, actually. and his smile makes you want to kiss him. it makes Shang want to scream. and to kiss him.

and then comes the last leg. and she's got the gender-neutral robes, the "neutral" stage makeup. the loose updo. and you've never been as attracted to anyone in your life as Shang is to her. and you get it. you really, really get it. and wow the way the cuff of her sleeves and the silhouette of her robes make your heart clench. and the way her posture, her gait, make a new kind of sense. you can feel this is It. this is The Costume. you're obsessed and Shang is obsessed.

And then in the end, she's wearing pretty soft-colored robes and it makes you think for a moment that she looks like she did at the beginning. but then actually something makes her strength visible too. is it the cut of the costume? her posture? the framing of the shots? Yes it is. and you know, when Shang shows up, You know he can see it too. and he doesn't want to stop looking any more than you do. and he isn't going to even when you do.

every kid that ever watched my Mulan would recall it as Formative, like y'alls Danny Phantom but on the sickest steroids ever invented. She'd be irresistible. and so very gender.

[starry-bi-sky]

The Firstborn: Danyal Al Ghul

[zombiecheri]

I really hope Mizu and Taigen never end up together. I don't exactly dislike Taigen's character but I don't see him with Mizu. It would be so forced to me. "he bullied you in past and now likes you" trope is so shitty in my opinion. So overused, so boring, so cliche. It's doing nothing to me.

I don't see Mizu with Akemi either. As much as I want Mizu with a girl (mostly because I need a confirmation that she's indeed wlw), I don't think they're compatible. I don't see Mizu with anyone at this point. I don't think she needs a love interest. Not all characters need one, plus her past would make sense why she wouldn't want it.

Anyways, if Mizu does end up with Taigen I'll be very disappointed. I lied a little bit when I said I didn't dislike him, he is very annoying to me. He's not bad, just annoying, uninteresting and unfortunately very boring. He does nothing for me as a character.

Walmart Zuko mixed with Shang with a bald spot (I'm jealous over pixels what the fuck is my life)

[grison-in-space]

The obvious question—why do women organize against their own freedom—is thorny.4 In her 1983 book Right-Wing Women, radical feminist author Andrea Dworkin tried to answer it. She described three types of antifeminism. “Man dominant” was the crudest form, resting on the principle that men should subjugate women because male dominance is natural, necessary, and rooted in love. “Woman superior” held that female power resided in women’s lofty moral sensibility and sexual desirability—not to be confused with their sexual desire. Women’s authority was innate yet limited, physical yet passive. (“She’s ethereal,” Dworkin wrote, “she floats.”) The last type, “separate but equal,” emphasized that the sexes were destined for different spheres of existence, neither of which was better than the other. Women bearing and nurturing children was just as important as men providing for them financially or fighting wars to protect them. Dworkin theorized that some women embraced antifeminism, in one form or a combination, as a means of self-preservation in the face of male oppression. “Feminists, from a base of powerlessness, want to destroy that power,” she said. “Right-wing women, from a base of powerlessness, the same base, accommodate to that power because quite simply they see no way out from under.” Dworkin also argued that any disdain antifeminist women felt toward an “other” on the basis of race or another identity marker was really displaced rage they felt toward men. “They are easily controlled and manipulated haters,” she said of these women. “Having good reason to hate, but not the courage to rebel, women require symbols of danger that justify their fear.”5 Dworkin’s interpretation was compelling, but it contained two monolithic assumptions: that the patriarchy is an absolute negative for all women, and that women act largely on the basis of their womanhood. In fact, the overlapping lines of race, class, and culture complicate both ideas. What about women who benefit—or want to benefit—from existing structures of dominance? We risk stripping them of responsibility when we suggest that the harm they do is merely a way of coping with their own oppression, whether real or presumed. As Adrienne Rich wrote in Of Woman Born, “Theories of female power and female ascendancy must reckon fully with the ambiguities of our being, with the continuum of our consciousness, the potentialities for both creative and destructive energy in each of us.”6

[grand-theft-carbohydrates]

hmm liu bang being a verified member of the baby-tosser's club is not as cut and dried as i thought, apparently it's only mentioned in xiang yu's biography but is omitted in his. that's a conflict of interest if i've ever seen it. that being said, u gotta admit nothing about han gaozu make this seem at all out of character for him.

[jackawful]

I straightup consumed The Sapling Cage in like three days and I think one of the things that always gets me about Margaret Killjoy's work is that like...even moreso than the Le Guin I've read, Killjoy is excellent at portraying daily anarchist life in a bunch of little ways. I got this a lot in The Lamb Will Slaughter The Lion as well (still gotta read her other longform stuff). But like. Big consensus-building meetings are just as slow and frustrating and still-important-despite-that and productive as the real life spokescouncils I've been in. People choose the work they do freely and shit still gets done and the quality of that work varies a lot. People butt heads over methods and tactics while ostensibly sharing the same goals. There's social hierarchies to navigate despite efforts to prevent official hierarchy. Shit's never perfect, but living free is always better than capitulating to the authorities.

The structure of the Order of the Vine so very reflects AG-based organizing (and the fact that sometimes people just Do Shit Solo too) in a way that was definitely on purpose as a way to teach the hypothetical teenage reader these methods and I'm so glad that exists. The text is so completely How To Live Anarchistically For Babies that I somehow recognized a lot of my own experiences even in a medieval fantasy framework.

Edit: I cannot believe I forgot to mention the words/action/magic trio of Ways To Enact Your Will On The World and how the new witches train on action first...literally direct action for teenagers! It's so good!

[atopvisenyashill]

Sorry, but I saw your tags on an Alicent post and I am now using your inbox as a way to rant about the reaction to the Viserys praise in Season 2.

Because no, we probably didn’t need a once-an-episode mention of how great he was. But people acting as though that’s out of character for Alicent or that the show is engaging in abuse apologia really annoys me.

First, in the context of Westeros, none of what Viserys did to Alicent is recognized as abuse. While she was slightly under the Westerosi age of maturity when they married, she had almost certainly had her first period by that point and was therefore seen as appropriate to marry. Marital rape is not a concept for them, and even if he hit her (which I think is unlikely from what we are presented) no-one is going to punish him. He is the king. So while she clearly knows that she doesn’t like “having sex” with Viserys, it’s likely that she (consciously) sees it as less of “he’s forcing me to do this” and more as “I am bearing my marital duty as best as I can, perhaps this is how it is for all women” or at worst, “I’m a bad wife.” As for the emotional abuse: even our modern society is really just discovering that concept. Either way, given the context of Westeros and how she was raised, I think it would be very unlikely for her to recognize his treatment of her as abuse and subsequently rail against it. My guess is that she sees him as a kind of typical husband: she wasn’t in love with him, but she liked him sometimes and he was sometimes nice to her, and he was never overly violent in a way that she would recognize. In her mind, he was a fine husband and a good king.

Second, the idea that abuse survivors feeling anything less than murderous rage towards their abusers is “abuse apologia” really pisses me off. Especially when we’re talking about Alicent in the context of being a victim of grooming, which is done specifically so that the victim sees nothing wrong with their abuse. I see this with Rhaenyra about Daemon sometimes and it just…that’s just not always how it works. Not every single survivor of abuse is just going to hate their abuser with no complicated feelings (which there’s nothing wrong with to be clear) and oftentimes, they are going to have a lot of complicated feelings. So the idea that she should just plainly hate Viserys seems very reductionist to me and just further feeds what I’ve been feeling about the way that a lot of people seem to want Alicent to be a perfect victim.

Yeah first - I wish we had gotten an equivalent of Rhaenyra's "we became one person he could love" speech for the greens. I think that speech went a long way in telling us how Rhaenyra feels about her father (and Daemon, and vice versa) and how he's negatively impacted them and their lives without being an ooc "wow maybe my dad did suck all along" sort of thing. I don't think the greens really get that - I think it makes sense for Otto to compare Aegon disfavorably against Viserys at this point (Aegon is acting kinda wild) and for the smallfolk as well to look disfavorably on Aegon and Aemond (Viserys never dragged them into a dumb fuck war, did he) but at the same time, these comments are not made in a vacuum and I think especially when it comes to Viserys' neglect of his kids and the domestic violence Alicent experiences, which is not only kind of, idk, subtle I suppose (subtle for a general audience, anyway, bc even people real deep in discourse in fandom don't understand dv lol, let alone random joe schmoe just watching his dragon show), but also it's not a thing they have words for or context for in the show, and i think there should have been more spice there when discussing him. but that gets into how the greens writing fell off right around regent/smallfolk.

But secondly - YES. God last season it annoyed the SHIT out of me because I watched a) the throne room scene and b) Alicent crying alone over him, and I FELT that shit. It all rang so true to me - Viserys making a grand gesture at the 11th hour that makes him feel good but ultimately does not really help Rhaenyra's cause in any sort of meaningful way, and Alicent who feels so duty bound to be A Good Wife left crying alone in her room after her shitty husband dies because she HAS to mourn him, that's what a good wife does. And I saw people describe it as "rhaenyra needs viserys to save her" "why does alicent care about that rotting idiot" "why can't rhaenyra/alicent be strong on her own" and it made me want to scream.

Viserys is integral to understanding their characters! Arguably he is the influence on the way both of them develop as people, in both the book and the show. Rhaenyra loves her father - and I will say it again because I don't think people understand that Rhaenyra loves her father. When she's angry with him, when she argues with him, it is because she feels rejected by him, not because she hates him! She does not resent him for putting her in this situation - or, she does, but that resentment does not point towards him and frankly, it never will! It's the same reason Sansa cannot resent Ned, Cersei can't hate Tywin, Arianne is so desperate for approval from Doran. I think often people want Rhaenyra to reject Viserys completely because they think it's what they would do (no, they wouldn't, but alright, u can lie to urself here) but feeling like you've been backed into a corner and reaching for a parent, even a flawed one, to come rescue you, and he does (sort of, kind of, in a way that makes him feel better and is flashy but kind of useless) makes sense when you think about where Rhaenyra will end up which is following this thread and this inheritance she gets from her father to a bitter, violent end!

And then Alicent. Alicent who spells it out literally right on screen that her whole life is about serving ideals she thinks are above her, outside of her, greater than her. And what are these ideals? Family, duty, sacrifice. And who is the living embodiment of family, duty, sacrifice? The patriarch! Her husband! She is duty bound to love him, to mourn him, and so she does, because even in the privacy of her own room, the privacy of her own mind she is incapable of separating her self from her husband, her sons, her duty. She uses Viserys as a cover for her own feelings and desires constantly. And like you said - I mean, nothing that happens between them passes any sort of line in Westerosi society. I think Alicent is the sort of person who would force herself to find things to love about him and she very much seems to love the things in him that she loves in herself - his propensity for quiet, for reflection, his reluctance to act rashly, his perceived lack of violence. Of course she loves him. He practically raised her. Do we not love our fathers, even when they are imperfect?

It very much ties into all these ideas about being a "good victim" but people don't want to really talk about the way our concept of a "good victim" has shifted over the years. Now, when people love their abusers, when they don't rage against the abuse they experience, when they don't realize they're being abused, when they crave the abuse back, it's seen as being weak, unfeminist, bad writing. Real victims rage and seethe. Real victims plot to escape. Real victims may fawn in the moment but deep down they never loved their abusers even a little. That's just not true and it's especially not true when it comes to domestic abuse such as spousal or parental abuse, and because Rhaenyra and Alicent love and crave the abuse heaped on them because it is done by people who they love, by people who love them in return (however selfish that love may be!), it means the writing is bad. No, it's not actually. Sometimes, your dad sucks and you know he sucks and he never gets better and you love him anyway.

[celestialkiri]

Wanted to post this one here too! Enkha (on the back) and Runo in modern AU! Enkha is protective over Runo especially when some men are looking at her 😩 She already has company and Enkha doesn't like rivals 😤 Enkha @heyhopperart Runo @celestialkiri

[selenekallanwriter]

Watching Yentl with my mom as an adult was such a funny experience. Like, I have no idea if the creators intended to make such a queer movie, but by Morrigan, they did. Mom and I had watched it when I was a child, and a lot flew over my head, but as an adult? Damn.

I started giggling when Avigdor and Anshel were doing their academic flirting thing. "What?" Mom asked. I pointed at the TV. "You realize they're flirting, right?" "They're not. They're friends," Mom argued. I laughed. "Uh-huh."

Then there was the tickling. And The Lake Scene. "Okay, I see it now," Mom said with a frown. I downright cackled. "Anshel and Avigdor sitting in a tree…" Mom rolled her eyes. "More like in the grass."

I squealed. "Yentl totally has a crush on Hadass now, too! The way she's looking at Hadass. Priceless." Mom huffed. "Hadass is gorgeous. Yentl is just… acknowledging Hadass' beauty." I was giggling non-stop. "Yeah, right. Is that what they called it in the 80s?" Mom shrugged and smiled. "Probably."

I was about to burst at this point Mom blinked at the screen. "They fell in love with each other." "They totally fell in love with each other! And you know what? If I'd been Yentl, I would have stayed with Hadass." "There were a couple of things Hadass would have noticed the next time she tried to debauch Yentl." "Was that a Mulan reference?" Mom smirked. "Yes. It fits." I laughed. "It so fits. And, eh, I bet Hadass would have eventually not minded Anshel-Yentl was her wife and not her husband." Mom hummed. "I'm not so sure." "Everybody's bisexual here, Mom. EVERYBODY." "What about when Hadass never got pregnant?" Mom asked. "People would have asked questions. Their community was too nosy." I shrugged. "Yentl could have said either of them was infertile." "Hmm."

"Bullshit!" I yelled. "Buuullshit. You were totally into the cute Twink, Avigdor. Own it!" "What's a twink?" Mom asked. "A pretty gay man." "Ah. But no. You're wrong. Avigdor could sense Yentl's femininity," Mom deadpanned. "With his sixth sense." "… You're kidding right?" "No. Avigdor has a sixth sense for this stuff, I tell you," she said, serious as can be. (She's eerily good at that.) "You are kidding, right?" I asked. Mom huffed and rolled her eyes. "Yes, I am. He was gay for Anshel-Yentl." I nodded. "Just like Shang was gay for Ping." Mom nodded. "Yep."

"You know what?" I said when the movie was over. "I changed my mind. They should have all stayed together and been a throuple. Anshel-Yentl could have easily explained their friend Avigdor coming to visit all the time. They were all in love with each other. It makes perfect sense." Mom scoffed. "Pervert." "I'm right, though. They could have moved to America together." Mom thought about it. "But Yentl wanted freedom. She wouldn't have gotten that tied to Avigdor." "Good point. Though, the way I see it, Yentl would have been the throuple leader. She's got bigger metaphorical balls than Avigdor could ever dream of having." Mom shrugged. "Alright. True." "I can't believe you didn't notice how queer this movie was when you first saw it," I said, shaking my head. "Neither did you." "I was seven. What's your excuse?" "I was in church and was taught everything gay was evil. And I just didn't notice." "It is pretty subtle," I conceded. "Maybe the ones who made the movie didn't intend it to be so queer. Or they knew how oblivious the straights are." "Or maybe Avigdor has a sixth sense that allows him to discover women in disguise," Mom said sarcastically. I snorted. "Yeah. It's called a nose. I bet Anshel smelled better than any other guy." "Like Mulan." "Yep. Or maybe Avigdor was bi as hell." Mom sighed with mock wistfulness. "I guess we'll never know." "Never."

BONUS:

Me: OMG there's only one bed. Mom: And Yentl is falling off of it. Me: 🤣

[nutmeggery]

Remember that time David Tennant played a character who fell in love with a woman disguised as a man without knowing she was a woman and had a whole queer crisis about it before deciding to go for it anyway and then pulled a fake dick out of her pants?

Yeah that was fucking Casanova

[lulu2992]

Last month, I also watched the Walt Disney Animation Studios’ 100th Anniversary short film Once Upon A Studio, and I loved it.

It’s not the story I liked most; it was nice and cute, but nothing revolutionary or unexpected. What I loved was seeing and hearing all these familiar characters, especially the 2D-animated ones, again. I’m a fan of hand-drawn animation and really miss it, so I was happy to experience it once more, even if it was only for a few minutes.

I love traditional animation because it’s always felt more magical and “personal” to me. I missed seeing a character on screen and thinking, “I know who drew you”. Here, when Louis (The Princess and The Frog) appeared, I recognized his original supervising animator Eric Goldberg’s work. I also knew that impressive shot of Peter Pan and the Darling siblings flying around the building could only have been animated by James Baxter (his brain works in 3D; I don’t know how he does that but it’s always mind-blowing). And as a fan of Mulan, seeing her not only being animated by Mark Henn, whose style I think is unmistakable and who was her supervising animator in the 1998 movie, but also holding hands and singing with Snow White (the first Disney protagonist) and Asha (the latest Disney protagonist) was quite special and moving.

What’s also great is that you can tell they tried to remain as faithful as possible to each movie’s original visual style, which means characters, for the most part, really look like they’ve just come out of their respective films. Graphically speaking, the numerous protagonists all have their own identity (it clearly was the artists’ goal, and I think they achieved it), but the whole thing still looks surprisingly coherent. The vast majority of the original voice actors are back, which is a very nice touch as well.

I don’t know, I just think the care, skills, and passion of the people who worked on Once Upon A Studio were palpable, and that felt good. Their attention to detail is evident, and as someone who grew up watching hand-drawn animated movies and truly loves the artistry behind them, I appreciate that.

[caliburn-the-sword]

other than the entire adultery plotline, the only thing i would retcon in the entire season 1 of ouat is the fairies are cursed to become nuns in storybrooke. WHAT EVEN WAS THAT??? so many characters became their exact opposites, so why was blue the exact same stuffy woman both as a fairy and in storybrooke? in my mind, the fairies became a giant lesbian commune (so essentially what they already were in the enchanted forest) living on the outskirts of town. and because storybrooke shouldn't have any contact with the outside world, the fairies collectively own a farm that sources most of the food for all of storybrooke. when the curse broke they were like hey actually this is pretty good. and kept being a giant lesbian commune.

[chaotic-orphan]

Whumpee having her mulan moment okayyyy

PFFFFTTTT PAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!! No, nooooo because—— no. I swear to god, I was writing the piece and I was so in Whumpee’s head of paranoia and stress and then Caretaker walks in and I was like

TO MYSELF, THE WRITER!!! THE WRITER WHO IS WRITING THIS FICTIONAL DRABBLE FOR A WHUMP EVENT

I stopped thinking and was like “oh my god, he is so hot” and then my brain was like…

Okay and Whumpee’s mind clears the moment she sees him because she wants to marry this man

I fucking CACKLED when I saw your comment ahahahahahahhaha, it really is her Mulan moment

She was like I WILL DRESS AS A BOY TO BE A SAILOR— oh FUCK, my superior is a total hotty and definitely husband material, wait until I tell my family they will freak tf out

[trentcrimminallybeautiful]

sometimes when im bored i imagine various ted lasso characters on taskmaster and that cheers me up

[stinkybrowndogs]

I dont talk about animation much bc i know id be insufferable but i think my biggest issue with the recent disney movies (im talking like.... tangled- present) is that they all look the same. The animation is fine the effects are fine the stories are hit and miss. But u can tell that all the character designs were done by the same team of artists. Nothing wrong with the style per say but i wish they would.... do something different :/